DISTURBED's DAN DONEGAN 'Can't Believe' The Response To Band's New Single, Album Announcement

Styles and Kaytie of the 92.7 QLZ radio station recently conducted an interview with DISTURBED guitarist Dan Donegan. You can now listen to the chat in the YouTube clip below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On the response to the announcement of DISTURBED's return and the band's new single, "The Vengeful One", and album, "Immortalized":

"Insane. It's insane. I mean, I'm just overwhelmed. I'm emotional over it. I can't believe the kind of response we've been getting. It's nice to see that, [after] this long of a break, we came back swinging. The fans have been waiting patiently for it, and they've reassured us that they've always been loyal to us. After all these years, I'm just very appreciative of it. It's been a tough secret to keep. To have this album, kind of, in the can, waiting to let the fans know that we secretly had it recorded, were ready to go and letting them know that the hiatus was over, and we're just excited to get going again."

On how and why DISTURBED kept its recording plans a secret:

"With social media, it's so difficult to do anything without it being leaked and getting out there. But I think we kind of used that to our advantage, in the way that we were recording the album in Las Vegas, but me and Mike [Wengren], our drummer, would come home as much as we could on the weekends and we would use social media to make sure that we were posting that we were home. He's in Waukesha, Wisconsin and I'm in Chicago, and we're trying to post all these things that we were with the families and the kids and our friends, so that any rumors that people had early on, it would kind of squash that, when they said, 'Well, I don't think they are… They can't be recording, because I've just seen Dan posted he's in Chicago doing this or doing that.' So we tried to use that social media in our favor to, kind of, get people off the scent of it. And the reason for the secret, we just wanted a little different process this time around. When we went in the studio, we had no timeframe, no deadline; we just wanted to really take our time… We didn't wanna speak too soon to the fans. We didn't wanna say something too early on, make them have to wait some more for it. And we figured, at this point, it would be a nice surprise and a nice gift to them to have it finished and then just drop the song, and nobody even knew that we were even talking. 'Here's the new single,' and everybody gets excited about it again, knowing that it's gonna be coming sooner than they expected."

On working with producer Kevin Churko (FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH, IN THIS MOMENT, PAPA ROACH, OZZY OSBOURNE) on "Immortalized":

"Last summer, we went out… Once we realized we wanted to do things a little bit differently this time… We recorded everything in the past here in Chicago, and we thought, 'Maybe we should get out of our hometown for a minute. Let's just go somewhere where we can get away from it,' and see if there was somebody out there that we gelled with, somebody that we had a chemistry with. And time was on our side, and that was the great thing. So we took some meetings with some big, legendary producers [including Bob Rock and Rob Cavallo] and we just spent a couple of days with each guy and we just… It was a really good, eye-opening experience; we had some great moments. And when we got in there with Churko, it was just… Almost instantly, I'd say within the first hour or two at the most, we were already writing the title track, 'Immortalized'. And that came out of nowhere; there wasn't any idea coming in there. I just said, 'Hey, let's throw out a beat, and let me just write a riff.' I just came up with the riff on the moment, and David [Draiman, vocals] came up with the melody. So it just seemed undeniable that there was a chemistry being in the room with him. He is a very creative, very talented guy, and he's somebody that we can bounce ideas off of, and he could do the same to us. He's just another talented musician in the room that could just, maybe, push us or suggest things that maybe we wouldn't be thinking. So we hit it off really quick with him."

"Immortalized", DISTURBED's first new album since 2011, is due out August 21. The CD follows 2010's gold-certified, chart-topping "Asylum".

The video for "The Vengeful One" has racked up more than 2 million views since going online on June 23.